Tide Pickers by Rosanna Warren
Question marks at the tide line, dark figures bend
to rocks, to kelp, to sighing
pools. They hunt this evening
what they hunted at dawn: what can be kenned
from the ocean's drawl, its lungs
and tongue exposed. The more brutal
question: will it feed us? brings
their curled spines an immemorial
conviction. They worry rocks, grapple the sea's
hiss. The sea in its gasping never
answers. Yet centuries
keep lisping the question, and in it whisper another
less pronounceable: how will we
die? Phrased and rephrased ad infinitum
and still the sea shrugs off all idiom
and hauls the pickers out as tirelessly
as tides. Figures stalk against the last anemone
glow as Venus rises. Small boats rock
to sleep, Glénan winks from its drowse across the bay,
two figures limned in early moonlight lock:
like the tide pickers against the hollow ocean,
framed in the window, a man and woman bend
down into each other, carving that question
the sea won't answer though human hand grasp hand.
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